#cities

London is on the whole the most possible form of life. ↗

— Henry James

#city-life #life #london #metropolis #life

People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#eccentricities #life

I have to admit we are locked in the most exquisite mysterious muck. This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor. To describe it takes many hundreds of thousands of words. Our muck is only a part of a much greater muck -- the nation-state -- which is itself the creation of that muck of mucks, human consciousness. Of course all these things also have a touch of sublimity -- as when Moonbelly sings, for example, or all the lights go out. What a happy time that was, when all the electricity went away! If only we could re-create that paradise! By, for instance, all forgetting to pay our electric bills at the same time. All nine million of us. Then we'd all get those little notices that say unless we remit within five days the lights will go out. We all stand up from our chairs with the notice in ours hands. The same thought drifts across the furrowed surface of nine million minds. We wink at each other, through the walls. ↗

— Donald Barthelme

#human-society #humor #life #life

Liberation was in the very scale of the city: a goldfish bowl one could never grow to fit. ↗

— Sheridan Hay

#city-life #urban-life #life

Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real. ↗

— Nelson Algren

#cities #love #lovely #love

You can't love a city if you have no memories burried there. ↗

— Marina Tavares Dias

#love #memories #places #love

Traffic's not too bad on Sheridan, and I'm cornering the car like it's the Indy 500, and we're listening to my favorite NMH song, "Holland, 1945," and then onto Lake Shore Drive, the waves of Lake Michigan crashing against the boulders by the Drive, the windows cracked to get the car to defrost, the dirty, bracing, cold air rushing in, and I love the way Chicago smells—Chicago is brackish lake water and soot and sweat and grease and I love it, and I love this song, and Tiny's saying I love this song, and he's got the visor down so he can muss up his hair a little more expertly. ↗

— John Green

#love

It is a far far better thing that I do, than I have ever done. It is a far far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known." protagonist, facing the guillotine, sacrificing himself for the sake of his love ↗

— Charles Dickens

#cities #dickens #rest #revolution #tale

Dull, inert cities, it is true, do contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves. ↗

— Jane Jacobs

#city-planning #urban #urban-planning #death

Traffic congestion is caused by vehicles, not by people in themselves. ↗

— Jane Jacobs

#traffic #urban-planning #death